


Ghosts

by historymiss



Category: Dragon Age
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-24
Updated: 2012-01-24
Packaged: 2017-10-30 01:41:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/326362
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/historymiss/pseuds/historymiss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Postgame Anders/f!Hawke- one of the first DA2 fics I wrote! </p><p>'I'm not calling you a ghost- just stop haunting me'</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ghosts

It's rare for Birch Crossing to get two strangers in one week- just big enough to rate a Chantry, the sorry collection of farms and a few stone buildings sees most of its traffic pass through on the way to bigger and better things. It's useful only as a staging post for those between journeys.

The first visitor goes almost unnoticed: a beggar, one of many who hitch a ride with travelling caravans, but the first who's been stupid or desperate enough to stay in the town rather than keep on towards the bigger cities. Nobody pays him much attention as he squats outside the Chantry, too broken even to beg. Later some of the children follow him at a distance as he picks his way across the town midden, throwing rocks and insults. He barely notices, or if he does, he keeps it to himself.

Ellen Jarvis lets him stay in her barn, or rather she leaves the door open and doesn't call the Guard when he makes his way inside. The beggar has something about him that wakes an ache in her heart- a story she doesn't tell any more about a young man taken to the Circle a long time ago.

Two nights later, Birch Crossing's Chantry burns.

On the third day, the next stranger comes. She's clad in shining armour with the crest of a far-off city half-scratched off it, and carries a sword almost as tall as she is. The caravan she travelled with pays her handsomely for her protection, but she refuses most of it and distributes the rest asking for information. A man, this tall, she indicates, with blonde hair. Brown eyes, or blue. She describes him with the careful words of a lover. Ellen fights her instincts, takes the woman by the hand and leads her to the barn.

The beggar's hair might have been blonde once. It's hard to tell. His eyes are shadowed, focussed on something far off, past a veil none but him can pierce. He hasn't eaten in days, though food's been left. It's a ruin of a man that turns away from the light of the open door and crawls back into the shadows. Still, the woman murmurs in recognition and moves forward.

Ellen wants to leave the strangers to their conversation, but the silence draws her like a magnet until she finds herself standing, an ear agains the door, willing the two to talk. To tell their story.

When the woman speaks, it's with the sorrow of one much older, and a deep yearning.

"You seem to have a talent for running away."

No answer. There's a creaking of leather and plate as the woman sits down.

"I shouldn't be surprised, really. I talked to the Warden-Commander, you know. She told me all about you. About before. You were never really happy, were you? Not with the Circle, with the Grey Wardens, with anything the way it was. You remind me of my sister, sometimes. You used to get along well with her, didn't you? Remember? The old days?"

A pause.

"I'm going to keep following you, you know."

Another long silence ends in an explosion of frustration.

"Maker's breath, do you even know I'm here?"

Finally, a reply comes in a rushing of voices that Ellen instinctively knows is not of this world.

"I do not know you, human. I am not the man you seek."

It's the voice of a demon, and she turns and runs, every instinct she has screaming wrong wrong wrong so loud she doesn't hear the next part of their conversation- wouldn't care if she did.

"Andraste's tears, Anders, just come back with me."

"I am not Anders. I am Vengeance."


End file.
